Entries from November 2008 ↓

Firefighters were taken here today after being exposed to very high levels of carbon monoxide. It all started after they were called to a home this morning where a 43-year-old woman was having difficulty breathing. The woman is dead, and the firefighters are all being treated for carbon monoxide poisoning.

Minutes after arriving to this Southwest Fresno home, fire crews found themselves in a dire situation.

“More than 10 times the amount of carbon monoxide that we normally would call dangerous was found inside this home,” said Ken Shockley.

Within minutes, one firefighter passed out. The other two including Matthew Mills started feeling faint.

“They were working on the patient and I went to go and open up the house to get some air flowing through there. When I came back, one of my own members was saying, we need to get out of this building cause we’re feeling dizzy,” said Matthew Mills.

There was no power inside this home. Fire crews say the 43-year old woman was using a generator for both power and heat. They think carbon monoxide an odorless silent killer may have been building up for several days.

“That’s sad. Two days before Thanksgiving, though. It aint right you just can’t take life for granted, that’s all that means,” said a family friend Michael Burton.

As family and friends mourn, these firefighters are counting their blessings. They were put into hyperbaric chambers to reduce the amount of carbon monoxide in their blood. Doctors say they will all make a full recovery.

The three firefighters have since been released from the hospital. There were two other people inside the home. They were also treated for carbon monoxide poisoning and are expected to be okay.

Story by Fresno ABC 7 Local

An early-morning blaze gutted a San Anselmo home Friday.Fire officials said a couple who were renting the single-story unit at 404 San Francisco Blvd. escaped without injury to report the fire at 3:41 a.m., but their dog died. Firefighters from Marin County Fire, Ross Valley and Kentfield fire departments had the blaze contained by 4:16 a.m.

“It was a total loss,” Marin County fire Battalion Chief Tim Thompson said of the 800-square-foot wood-shingled home. “It’s still standing, but it’s gutted.”

Neighbor Maggie Sorgen saw fire and smoke pouring out of the nearby roof after firefighters hustled her out of her house. She said the young occupants “were lucky to get out.

“They woke up to smoke throughout and were standing in their bare feet,” she said.

Sorgen did not know the names of the couple.The unit was one of several rentals owned by Tiburon resident Gideon Sorokin in the area known by locals as “the compound” at the end of the road. The home was not equipped with fire detectors, Thompson said.

Thompson said the possible cause of the fire, which appeared to have started next to the water heater, was an electrical unit, but officials were continuing their investigation.

Story written by Marin Independent Journal

WEST COVINA - A mechanical warehouse at the West Covina Unified School District’s maintenance yard was destroyed by fire Tuesday, officials said.The blaze was reported at 7p.m. on the grounds of the school district administrative office, located at 1717 W. Merced Ave., West Covina Fire Department Capt. Brent Hamm said.

Firefighters immediately called for backup, “due to the amount of fire when our units arrived,” Hamm said.

Thirty-seven firefighters doused the flames with water from the ground and from a ladder perched high above the burning structure.

The building appeared to be a total loss and a school bus stored inside the building was destroyed in the blaze, West Covina Fire Department Capt. Michael Fountain said.

Officials initially expressed concern that there may have been chemicals, such as paint and propane, inside the building, however it was later determined that the fire was not believed to pose a hazardous materials threat, officials said.

School district maintenance workers were summoned to the scene to explain to firefighters what was stored in the building and where, Los Angeles County Fire Department Capt. Joel Douty said.

The fire was extinguished in about 30 minutes, Fountain said. Firefighters cut through the building’s metal walls with saws to access the blaze.

Story by San Gabriel Valley Tribune

Two separate fires displaced 24 Ventura County residents the day before Thanksgiving, authorities said.

A garage fire in Oxnard displaced 20 people who lived in the attached home and sent eight of them to the hospital early Wednesday. An hour later, a fire in a Simi Valley home displaced a family of four, sent three of them to the hospital and killed four dogs.

The first fire was reported about 1:30 a.m. in a home in the 4700 block of Reeder Avenue in Oxnard. Firefighters arrived to find the home filled with smoke and the attached garage engulfed in flames, the Oxnard Fire Department reported.

All 13 adults and seven children were able to get out on their own. Eight of them, including five children under the age of 7, were taken to St. John’s Regional Medical Center in Oxnard with symptoms of smoke inhalation, fire officials said.

Firefighters extinguished the fire within five minutes, officials said. The blaze caused an estimated $180,000 in damage to the garage and home.

Oxnard fire investigators believe the blaze began in a car parked in the home’s driveway and then spread to the garage, but they were not sure what ignited it, said Battalion Chief Gary Sugich.

On Wednesday morning, two burned-out cars sat in the home’s driveway. The front of the large home appeared unscathed except for a small pile of insulation on the lawn.

Owner Maria Martinez said the families living in the five-bedroom home moved in several months ago. There were no smoke detectors in the home, and Sugich said it’s lucky all the residents were able to get out safely.

Story by Ventura County Star

BARSTOW • The Barstow Fire Protection District is preparing to tighten its belt in anticipation of decreasing property tax revenues.

The district’s board of directors adopted new guidelines on engine staffing and overtime at a special meeting Monday.

The new rules will allow engines to roll with a two-man rather than three-man crew under some circumstances and will increase the use of paid-call firefighters.

Under the previous mandated staffing of three men to an engine, if a firefighter called in sick or took a leave, the position had to be filled using overtime hours. Chief Darrell Jauss estimated that the new policies will cut about 80 percent from the department’s overtime budget for the rest of the year. Last year’s overtime costs were more than $300,000 and the district had projected about the same for this year.

The revised staffing plan has been in the works since the San Bernardino County Auditor-Controller notified the district a couple of months ago that it would likely face about a $200,000 shortfall in its 2008-09 budget, Jauss said. The vast majority of the district’s funding comes from property taxes. The state of the economy and the number of foreclosures in the past year are likely to take a chunk out of those revenues, he said.

The new staffing plan is unrelated to the failure of the Measure D sales tax increase proposal in the Nov. 4 election, Jauss said. The proceeds of that measure would have gone to new staff and equipment, not to cover existing costs, and the district would likely not have begun collecting until July of 2009.

Jauss acknowledged the new rules represent somewhat of a step backward in terms of engine staffing. One of the goals of Measure D was to increase staffing enough that every engine could roll with a four-man crew.

Federal safety standards mandate that for every two firefighters inside a burning building, two more must be outside, and with the current engine staffing of three people, firefighters are not able to enter a burning building until a second engine arrives.

Still, cutting back on overtime was a preferable alternative to laying off firefighters, Jauss said at the meeting Monday. He and board members met with representatives of the firefighters’ association last week to go over the proposal.

Board member Ben Rosenberg pointed out at Monday’s meeting that the district has dropped its minimum engine staffing to two firefighters in the past.

“We’ve been here before and we got out of it — I guess we can probably get out of it again if we all play together,” he said.

Story by Desert Dispatch

On Monday, November 24, 2008, at 1938, three engine companies of Bullhead City Fire Fighters, three rescue ambulances, responded to a reported house fire at 1030 Papago Drive under the direction of Battalion Chief Greg Raymond.

Arriving firefighters found the 70 per cent of the mobile fully involved in flame.  Several hose lines were pulled for an aggressive exterior attack and the protection of neighboring residents.

The lone resident was not home at the time of the fire.  He in fact had been staying with friend while reestablishing power from a family member name into his own. He had stopped by to play with his pets and noticed smoke in the residence.

There were no injuries.  Fire Marshal Jim Dykens and Investigator John Jones were on scene to conduct the investigation as to exactly how this fire started.

Story and photos by Larry Tunforss, Bullhead City FD

A private plane carrying three Salt Lake City firefighters crashed in a remote area high in the Uinta Mountains on Friday, and one died of his injuries.

Dylan Hopkins, 25, was a paramedic and firefighter in Salt Lake City for four years. Late on Friday morning, he and fellow firefighters from Station No. 5, Bryon Meyer and Craig Weaver, took off in a Cessna 172 for a weekend trip to Colorado Springs, Colo., said Salt Lake City Fire spokesman Scott Freitag.

Somewhere over Wasatch County, pilot Weaver was attempting an emergency landing when his plane crashed in a small, remote clearing high in the Uinta Mountains. Weaver, who is also a flight paramedic for AirMed, called the helicopter rescue’s dispatch center on his cell phone about 12:15 p.m. as he and Meyer tried to revive Hopkins.

Three rescue helicopters launched a frantic search for their injured colleagues, whose white plane was nearly impossible to see in the snowy mountains 9,800 feet above sea level.

Weaver’s voice cut in and out about 50 times under spotty cell phone coverage, as rescuers combed a grid around where the plane dropped off the radar.

“We could hear the emergency transmitter going off through the cell phone, but we couldn’t triangulate it,” said Brain Simpson, AirMed program manager.

The search lasted for an hour and a half, but at 1:49 p.m. dispatchers heard the helicopters’ rotors through the phone line and knew they had found the spot.

All three helicopters landed in the snow. Flight paramedics took over the effort to save Hopkins and continued after landing at University Hospital. He was declared dead about 3 p.m.

Weaver and Meyer reached the hospital in serious to critical condition and are now stable.

“We are a family,” Freitag said. “We deal with this sort of thing every day, but when it happens to one of our own it is very hard.”

In his short time with the department, Hopkins distinguished himself by continuing to learn new skills, like heavy rescue.

After his death, his father remembered a 6-year-old Hopkins writing about how excited it would be to become a firefighter one day, Freitag said.

Story by Salt Lake Tribune

On Sunday, November 16, 2008 at 8:48 a.m. units of the San Jose Fire Department responded to multiple reports of a garage fire in a single family dwelling at 5309 Herbert Drive in the city’s Cambrian Park neighborhood.

Upon their arrival firefighters discovered a well involved garage with heavy smoke and flames showing from the single-story structure. The first units on scene initiated an aggressive fire attack and search of
the residence. All occupants were confirmed to be out of the home and firefighters launched fire suppression efforts.

Firefighters were able to prevent the fire from spreading to an adjacent exposure while also achieving a knockdown on the fire within a matter of minutes. One firefighter received a minor burn and was
treated at the scene, while at least one resident was transported to a local hospital for minor injuries.

Units working this incident included Engines 209, 13, 17, and Trucks 9 and 13. The incident commander was Battalion 13 (BC Jeff Clet).

Story and photos courtesy of Craig Allyn Rose, Emergency Photo

Bonny Doon residents upset by the refusal to allow the small mountain community to split off from County Fire services and create an independent fire department are seeking a rematch with authorities.

Supporters of an independent fire station in Bonny Doon have asked the Local Agency Formation Commission to reconsider the decision made in September to deny the proposal.

Residents asking commissioners to change their minds say staff reports recommending against the change were “unsubstantiated” and the seven commissioners had “insufficient information or knowledge” of the issue when casting their 4-3 vote in opposition of the proposal.

A new public hearing is scheduled for Dec. 8.

“Some of us in the community think that if the commission had more information, it might have made a difference,” Empire Grade resident Donita Springmeyer said. “There was no chance for us to rebut things that were said. That could have made a difference in the votes.”

Bonny Doon residents have been lobbying to break off from County Fire services, which are provided by Cal Fire, for more than two years.

The nearest Cal Fire station to Bonny Doon is north of Davenport on Swanton Road.

Some residents say they need fire-fighting independence to provide faster response times in the rural community, and improve training for volunteer firefighters and obtain better equipment.

They say a perfect example of why their own fire department is needed was demonstrated in this summer’s Martin Fire, which tore through the area destroying 500 acres and three homes. They said they were put at greater risk because Cal Fire officials did not immediately dispatch Bonny Doon volunteer firefighters to the wildfire.

The fire department would be paid for with a new property tax.

However, commissioners with the Local Agency Formation Commission agreed with Executive Director Pat McCormick’s view that splitting Bonny Doon from the county would impair fire coverage in other parts of rural Santa Cruz County, which is protected by four Cal Fire stations.

A new fire department in Bonny Doon would cause an estimated $365,000 annual loss to the County Fire budget, McCormick said.

In addition to degrading fire coverage in other areas, McCormick said operating a Bonny Doon fire department would cost more than $600,000 a year, an amount that could be hard for the small community to sustain.

McCormick suggested that Cal Fire establish a new station in Bonny Doon, a cheaper solution that he says would satisfy the residents’ desire for their own department while preserving fire protection across the county.

“I certainly agree that if we can provide better fire protection in Bonny Doon, then we should,” he said.

The new hearing to reconsider the proposal is a process to prevent the issue from ending up in court, McCormick said. Commissioners rarely consider appeals.

Jim Rapoza, chair of the LAFCO commission who voted against a Bonny Doon fire department, said there’s no way of knowing if he’ll change his mind.

West Coast 911 firefighting news source - Story by Santa Cruz Sentinel

A late-night fire burned a crematorium to the ground, but no human remains were inside at the time and a nearby mausoleum containing hundreds of urns and crypts sustained only superficial damage.

The Pajaro Valley Memorial Park crematorium on Hecker Pass Road wasn’t in use when the fire was reported around 11:40 p.m. Thursday. However, the blaze was challenging to battle because firefighters were concerned human remains might be damaged or destroyed by the flames, according to Battalion Chief Greg Estrada with Pajaro Valley Fire District.

“It was a slow process because we weren’t really sure if we had remains of people. We had to be diligent,” Estrada said. “We wanted to make sure we were doing the right thing for the family for respect.”

There were no bodies or remains inside the burning building, he said.

Fire investigators are still probing the cause of the blaze, but do not suspect foul play, Estrada said.

A barking dog alerted the on-site caretaker late Thursday. He stepped outside, saw the fire and called 911.

Fire crews from Pajaro Valley, Watsonville, Corralitos, Cal Fire, Aptos/La Selva, Central, North Monterey County and South Santa Clara County were called in to help battle the two-alarm fire.

Thirty-foot flames were shooting through the roof of the crematorium when firefighters arrived. The blaze destroyed the crematorium and the 1,000-square-foot structure surrounding it, Estrada said.

“Our concern, if we did get significant amount of smoke into that building, (was) what we would do?” Estrada said. “But we were able to hold the fire, push the fire back onto the original building and keep it out of the mausoleum.”

He said the masonry construction of the building contributed to firefighters protecting it.

“That was the saving grace for us,” Estrada said. “That really helped us to prevent the spread.”

The blaze did cause about $500,000 in smoke damage to the mausoleum but the building was inspected by the county Friday and declared structurally sound, according to fire officials.

Estrada said the crematorium fire is the first of its kind in the county in at least 10 years.

West Coast 911 source - Story by Santa Cruz Sentinel